


Queen's Lace

by hovercraft



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Pining, not too much angst just a little touch to make the fluff stand out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-10-01 20:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20393497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hovercraft/pseuds/hovercraft
Summary: Each time she’d greet Medb with a kiss, Medb would kiss her back.A request for siverfanweedo on tumblr.





	Queen's Lace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SIverfanweedo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SIverfanweedo/gifts).

> Another request! I'm taking these on tumblr @firsthassan. Feel free to leave an ask or a request here. I specialize in rarepairs!

Marie Antoinette was so, so sweet. Medb wondered, with her knowledge of the modern world now in her head, if she was a bit delusional for loving her country so much when they had taken her head, but that didn’t change that Marie was one of the highlights of Chaldea. Some Queens were different from the history told about them—Medb was no exception to this rule.

Each time she’d greet Medb with a kiss, Medb would kiss her back. Medb was attracted to all things saccharine, having perfected that persona for herself, and Marie was no exception. Tea parties in Chaldea’s nicer rooms were a staple for them, even if Marie would fondly miss how luxurious her tea parties were back in France.

That was a curious thing about Marie.

She was a paradox of both regretting the life she lead to have France hate her so, and both enjoyed it to its fullest. She loved her people, perhaps to a degree to which she was blind to their suffering. She’d never said ‘let them eat cake’, she never looked at the hideous cartoons they would draw of her in the newspaper about how rampantly luxurious the monarchy was while the rest of France suffered. Her heart ached for her past ignorance, but she was a royal, born to luxury and accustomed to it. Perhaps in Austria she would’ve grown to be like her mother, fearless and an astute leader, but in France…

“When I was a little girl, I had a sister…” Marie took three sugar cubes for her tea and swirled it until it all melted within. “She was left with terrible scars on her face thanks to smallpox. However, she was the warmest and kindest person you could ever meet. She would wear a veil wherever she went, but inside, she was so beautiful… I have no doubt she wouldn’t have made the same mistakes I had if she entered the French court, like she was supposed to.”

Marie had a wealth of siblings and family she would speak about to no end. Despite the fact that her life had ended early, every single day of hers was packed with so many memories that to Medb, it felt like she lived a full life. So every time they were free to, she entreated Marie to her room and had her share her stories, her past loves, and talk of her children. She was so radiant, and yet, whenever Sanson walked by their room, Medb would notice the very slight action of putting her hand to her neck in apparent surprise, but it was gone as soon as it came.

Medb prized all things that belonged to her with such fervor that whenever Sanson reared his head, so did her jealousy and anger. So many people had been summoned with their murderers in life, where did he get off with his obsession with her? Bound to her by karma? He was on the other end of Medb’s riding crop more than once, shooing him away or pestering him about how sick in the head he was—he always countered it that Medb’s obsessions were just the same, and that had Medb bring down the crop harder.

Ahh… Marie. Youthful, innocent Marie, who spent her last few living days knowing her and her children would be executed. Too precious for this world, so the Throne of Heroes had taken her into their fold. Medb would protect her—yes, from all the ugly things that Marie was prepared to meet head on. In battle, against casters usually, Medb would take the front line and crush their enemies before Marie had to lift a finger. She was a rare servant, after all! She had to pull her weight, and it wouldn’t do for Marie to break a nail when she’d just finished painting them for her.

Was this a little bit like love?

Medb’s love tended to be obsessive in nature, so perhaps it was a little bit like that. Turning her eyes away from her usual blue-haired obsession, she wanted to rest her head in Marie’s lap and listen to what it was like eating sugared fruits in front of an audience for breakfast every morning, to what her wild parties usually ended up like, and how cute all of her children were.

Medb was the only one who ever saw Marie’s heartbreak.

Around the children who frequented Chaldea, Marie tried to act like a perfect mother—and she failed in some respects, because she absolutely spoiled them with candy and cute clothes she had tailored for them. She’d been scolded a few times by Emiya, the real de-facto mother of the trio, but she couldn’t help herself. Her children had been destined for so much more than the guillotine, and Medb could only watch as she projected those feelings onto Chaldea’s only children.

“Medb…”

“Yes, darling?”

Marie lay quietly in her lap as Medb plucked the platinum blond strands of hair out of her eyes.

“I feel so comfortable around you…”

Ah, that sweet weakness! Medb knew it all too well. “That’s because as long as we’re here, I’ll always take care of you.”

“Truly?”

“Of course! I love you, my sweet Queen of France.”

Marie looked startled at that, wondering what she did to merit such a loaded string of words. Then again, Medb was the type to love a lot of people, and freely—just like Marie herself. “I love you too, then. It feels like for the first time, I have a friend.”

Oof, right through the heart. Medb didn’t give up that easily, though.

\--

“Merlin!!”

The magus was familiar with Medb, up until the point where he knew his flirting wouldn’t work on her. He turned and offered a smile, knowing that the queen obviously wanted something from him.

“What is it?”

“I want a field of flowers!” Medb huffed, tapping her riding crop in her hand. He balked at her.

“Don’t you know where we are? Flowers don’t—”

“Look, there are some at your feet right now. Use your noble phantasm and turn Chaldea into a garden!”

“Romani would absolutely have my head…” Merlin considered it, as making Romani’s life an ongoing problem was something of a hobby of his. “Can I ask why?”

“It’s in the name of love.” Medb said, proudly.

“Well in that case, how can I refuse? Of course, for my services, I expect something in retu--”

Medb happily smacked her riding crop into her hand. “I know your type, Merlin. Is it possible you want one-on-one time with me and my chariot? Ahhh, if that’s the price I have to make Marie happy—”

“No! Absolutely not. Consider this… free.” The mage was utterly defeated, as planned. She dragged him to the point where she wanted all of the flowers to start blooming, right outside of Marie’s room. As he lifted his staff and began the chant, soft blooms emerged from what was solid floor as Medb gave instructions.

“French flowers only! I want it to look like the _Hameau de la Reine_, exactly!” When Merlin opened his mouth to ask how the hell he was supposed to know that, Medb planted her boot into his back and said ‘Clairvoyance, obviously!’ To think he could be bullied so easily by such a petite woman… then again, Cu never got off scot free, either.

\--

As Marie woke up, white flowers had spread throughout her room.

That wasn’t exactly it. They _carpeted_ her room. No matter where she stepped, she was immersed in the scent of the rustic retreat that had been built for her and her children alone. Falling to her knees, she gathered up the flowers in her hands and inhaled deeply. This was the scent of home, and they said that scent had the most powerful ties to memory of all the senses.

“Surprise!” Medb said, throwing open the door as servants were confusedly walking through hallways of flowers, wondering why the hell Merlin had set off his noble phantasm indoors. “It’s just like home! I made the mage do it. I remembered each little detail and-- … Marie…?”

She didn’t expect to see the queen hunched over, crying.

“… Marie?”

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry, it’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful I can hardly speak. I feel like I’m home again, and that…” She wiped away her tears to stand up and hug Medb, though even Medb could tell these weren’t happy tears. These were tears of longing and sorrow, of missed days and memories long forgotten. Marie had done so well burying the atrocity of what happened to her and what she had unknowingly done in her mind that she hadn’t expected a reminder to crop up in the form of flowers.

Medb’s face fell, holding her torso as tightly as she could. This was supposed to be her grand romantic gesture, and it didn’t work.

“I mean it, I’m so grateful…” Marie’s voice started to take a change in tone. “Just for one moment, I was alive again. Thank you, Queen Medb.”

The gravity of those words weighed down on the queens. Perhaps she’d been a little careless.

\--

As much as Marie talked about herself, Medb didn’t mention much of her own life. Marie had to solve the puzzle of her from hints and in those she interacted with, like Fergus and Cu, how she handled something as simple as _cheese_, things like that. She knew Medb embraced her romantic side fully, and Marie was reminded of her own constraints growing up as the Princess of France. The difference between them could be like night and day, if you got down to certain things.

But Marie would still hold her hand as they talked, walking with Master down the road during a certain rayshift where they would have to camp out together and talk by the firelight as they guarded their master’s sleep.

“Marie… I’m sorry about the flowers.”

“Don’t be,” Marie’s dreamy voice was carried across the drifting wind as they sat close to one another. “I really meant it. It felt like I was alive for a few seconds.”

“Yeah, but to be reminded you—we aren’t…”

“Don’t be silly. I have the privilege of continuing to exist, as do you. If not for my neck on the block, I might have died as a forgotten royal, and the doors to the Throne of Heroes may never have opened to me. And that means I would have never met you.”

“…” Marie calling Medb a friend may have hurt a little, but now Medb was starting to understand the meaning behind those words. To Marie, a friend was more than just a friend. It was love. She had precious few friends in her life and a court to dance around and appease as time went by. She was something truly special to her.

“Marie, I…” Medb puffed out her cheeks and rested her hand on her chin. “I might love you more than friends.”

“Oh, and I too.”

“…!”

“When I called you a friend, I was giving you the title of something I never really had in life. Master is my friend too, but you’re more… than that. You wanted to give me something no one else could, just to put a smile on my face.”

Marie reached out and clasped Medb’s hand in hers as she scooted closer, leaning her head on her shoulder as she sat her poofy hat aside. “My first love, beyond my first life… it feels rather romantic, don’t you think?”

How could Marie fluster her like this? Medb was the one who flustered other people! Nonetheless, she nodded and squeezed her hand back. Tender romance like this was foreign to her—so she did what she knew best and kissed Marie hard, turning her face to hers with her free hand. Marie happily kissed back, letting Medb have her fill of her lips. When she parted, her cheeks were a rosy pink and she couldn’t help but laugh.

“Thank you so much, Medb.”

What was this relief? To be accepted so easily…

It felt nice.

“Thank you, Marie.”


End file.
